


love me (self against myself)

by MarauderCracker



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Human AU, Other, Punk AU, Stiles POV, everyone is a smoker, mentions of pot and alcohol, punk teen wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 17:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1194369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s probably Scott’s influence, but Stiles has always thought that love should make you want to write poetry and set flags on fire and start revolutions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. self against myself

**Author's Note:**

> Find the fanart and fanmix [here](http://queerhawkeye.tumblr.com/tagged/poly%20week). Written for the prompt "Why have drama when you can have sex?"

He develops a crush on Scott when they are like, ten. Scott reads him a poem in Spanish and then translates it for him. It's a poem about anarchism that Scott found in one of his mom's anthologies, and he likes it enough to go to the library and pick "No Gods, No Masters" and pretend that he actually understands what he's reading.

The crush fades a little, eventually (though his heart still skips the first time Scott passes a cigarette to him with a conspiratorial grin), just to be replaced by a complete infatuation over Lydia Martin. They are fourteen when she shows up to school with half of her head shaved and a  _lot_ of eyeliner, and he chokes on the smoke of his cigarette when he sees her. She was already gorgeous, of course, but future-prom-queen gorgeous is very different to gonna-start-a-revolution gorgeous. 

It's probably Scott's influence, but Stiles has always thought that love should make you want to write poetry and set flags on fire and start revolutions. 

 

Lydia doesn't actually see him. Like, she's watching as she walks, obviously, because she doesn't trip on him, but it's like she doesn't register. She always looks like she's on her way to set something on fire, with her lips pursed and the opening-and-closing of her Zippo lighter matched to the clicking rhythm of her heels. She isn't exactly popular, because none of the punk kids at BHH is, but she's on a completely different social level than Stiles and Scott are. The only person who dares talk to her is her best friend, Allison Argent. Everyone else feels a respectful terror for her that keeps them at a minimum of ten steps from her personal space at all times. 

Stiles keeps trying to break that bubble. He's been trying since they started high school, really. He's gone behind the bleachers, where he knows she's always smoking with Allison, and asked to borrow her lighter, but she handed it out without actually looking his way. He compliments her band shirts as she walks by regularly, never receiving an acknowledgement. If they're sitting close at the cafeteria, he'll talk a little louder about how much he likes M.I.A. or Natalia Kills, but she never seems to listen. 

Scott notices, of course, and laughs at him. Stiles scowls and huffs and tells him he's being a bad friend, but he prefer Scott laughing at his crush on Lydia than laughing at his crush  _on him_. He thinks that it came back with full force the first time he noticed Scott's fingers while rolling a cigarette, but he can't be sure. Maybe it never really went away, maybe it was just overshadowed by his fascination for Lydia. Whatever the case, all Fall Out Boy songs make him think of Scott, and he feels like a complete idiot every time his best friend smiles at him. 

Not that he would admit it, because somewhere around the time he turned fifteen he started trying to be tougher and colder, but Stiles still writes poetry and feels like there's a riot inside him when Lydia walks by or Scott leans his hand on his shoulder.

 

"God damn it, Stilinski, hurry the fuck up!" Lydia screams, tugging at his arm. Stiles is a little high, a lot drunk and pretty much sure he's hallucinating all of this. "For fucks's sake, Stilinski, run!" She insists, her voice shrill. He snaps out of it long enough to catch up with her, who seems to be able to run faster than most of the lacrosse team even while wearing the highest heels Stiles' ever seen. They run away from the police sirens, not really minding the direction they're going. Finally, they turn a corner and find an alley that's dark and quiet, without any other teenager trying to hide in the same place that could call the cops' attention. 

Stiles looks behind him to check that nobody followed them, and only then realizes he's lost Scott. His heart stops for a second. Scott has asthma and, no matter how much he insists that hand-rolled tobacco isn't as bad for him, Stiles knows he can't run three blocks to save his god damn life. God, he's the worst best friend in history.

"I lost Allison and Erica, god damn it," Lydia says, and she's taking a cigarette from its pack even though she's gasping through her words. "Want a smoke?" She asks, offering the box to Stiles. He accepts, even though Marlboro Lights are much softer than his Parliament and more bitter than Scott's tobacco. She lights her own cigarette and hands the lighter to Stiles. He looks at her mouth while she takes a drag, dumbfounded for a second too long. Finally, she looks at him and he shakes himself out of it and lights his cigarette. 

His phone rings, and it's Scott's ringtone. He picks up as fast as he can, relieved to hear the rumble of Scott's bike on the other side of the line. That means he didn't get caught, doesn't it? "Dude, where are you? I ran with Erica and Allison and then couldn't find you," Scott says, and he sounds worried. Scott always worries, Stiles thinks, feeling guilty for forgetting about him. Again. 

"I'm at... an alley behind the factory on 27th and 3rd. Are you with Erica and Allison?" He asks, on Lydia's behalf. She shoots him a smile, and Stiles' heart skips a beat. "Nope, Erica's boyfriend found us and insisted on driving them home. Why?" 

Scott arrives ten minutes later, and smiles brightly at them as he gets off his bike. Stiles can tell he's still a little high, and worries about him driving like that. Then again, he never worries about those kind of things if it's the two of them on Scott's bike or on Stiles' jeep. They know their limits, and wouldn't do anything as stupid as drive around when they could hurt themselves or others. (Scott's motto is that punk should unsettle the privileged and make people reconsider their worldview, never hurt people or put the oppressed in uncomfortable positions. Stiles just takes him as his moral compass.)

"Dude, that was a hell of a party, though," Scott says as he sits at his side. He grins at Lydia and hand-waves at her, and she rolls her eyes, but smiles back. Stiles doesn't know where to look, and he's sure the high and the tipsiness where washing off  _just a second ago_ , but he feels dizzy all over again. So, instead of trying to decide who he likes more, he starts fishing his pockets for the joint he's saved, or another cigarette, or whatever.

Lately, love always makes him feel more like setting all poetry and, since he's at it, himself on fire.

 

They become kind of friends after that. Or, to phrase it better: Lydia actually acknowledges that Scott and Stiles are living beings and directs towards them about the same amount of attention she dedicates to stray dogs. It's good, though. Better than the previous stage, definitely.

Allison and Scott really do get along, so they kind of drag their respective plus-ones and end up sitting in the same table with Isaac, Erica and Boyd. At first, they just share the table but keep on their own conversations, but the lines between their groups (if Stiles and Scott count as a  _group_ ) slowly start to blurry.

Erica's mom is from Uruguay, so Scott and her spend a lot of time talking in Spanish to keep a good grasp on it and teaching each other insults from their respective slang. Allison and Scott discuss hair dye and which colors they will get next, though all of them know that Scott only dyes his hair pink or green and Allison's had hers purple since she turned thirteen. Boyd helps everyone with their homework (except for Lydia, who's probably the smartest person with a half-shave in California). And, at some point, Stiles and Lydia start discussing anarchist theory and, he's not sure how, end up shifting to feminist theory and Scott steps in and the next Stiles know, the three of them share lattes at the local library at least once a week.

Stiles can't help it. His heart feels like it's constantly racing, but in a much better way now that he gets to discuss anarchist poetry and the possibility of a revolution with Lydia and Scott.

 

They get their first tattoos together. Scott inks two black bands around his arm, one for friendship and one for family. Lydia gets flowers that sprout from her wrist and bloom around the middle of her forearm, but doesn't explain her reasons. Stiles thinks it's pretty great that she doesn't feel a need to justify her aesthetic choices in front of other people.

And his tattoo... Well, he hesitates a lot. He doesn't like needles, and it takes him like three weeks to find  _it_ , and picking the right place is hard. And picking the language is a headache, because he wants to get it in its original language, but he would prefer getting something that he could read himself. I'ts only after he's decided to get it in Spanish that he realizes. The poem that Scott translated for him when they were kids, the one he's getting down the side of his ribs, sounds like a love poem for  _both_  Scott and Lydia.

He goes first. He's so busy wondering when the hell did his stupid crushes turn into this and freaking out about how fucked he is that he doesn't even have time to freak out about the needle against his skin. Scott congratulates him on not puking or complaining all the time, but any pride he could feel feel fades away as soon as he sees the tattoo artist turn on the machine and start on Scott's arm. Lydia retells the story of how he fainted in the middle of the saloon for weeks.

The poem translates to " _[Love me anarchist / frenetic / as I untangle and free / the scarf that holds / your hair / and I free your chest / yet restraintless / yet senseless / always to the frontier / red and black / and purple / love to the left  / face to face / to the night / to you / always to you / love me anarchist / self against myself.](http://www.poemas911.com/poema-amame-anarquista-claudio-rodriguez-fer-poemas-de-amor/)_ " and it makes Stiles feel all of those things that love is supposed to make you feel. Like getting love poems inked on your chest, or spray painting them on walls, or setting them on fire. Like starting a revolution.


	2. love me anarchist

Stiles is listening to Fall Out Boy  _so much louder_ than usual that his dad actually knocks on his door and asks if everything is fine. Not that his dad doesn't usually care if he's fine or not, it's just that, as a police sheriff, he prefers to avoid the details as much as possible, and knows Stiles will lie anyway. This time, though, Stiles' singing along to Folie á Deux might have been so emotional and out of tune that the poor man actually decided to see what is going on.

"I'm fine, dad," is Stiles' answer, of course. He turns the music down, low enough to hear his dad's sigh. "Were you smoking inside your room?" he asks, and Stiles cringes. Maybe, just this once, discussing his feelings with his dad might be a good idea.

"Have you ever been in love with two people at once?"

His dad sighs again, deeper this time, and steps into the room. He raises an eyebrow at the ashtray on the windowsill, but doesn't comment. "Son, I don't want you to get defensive," Stiles shifts on the spot, "or to overstep any boundaries, but," Stiles wonders if he should just jump off the window, "is, by any chance, Scott one of these people you're talking about?"

Stiles groans. He doesn't know if he's been completely obvious about his crush since the beginning or if having a detective for a father is the real problem here. He doesn't deny it, though, because he knows it'll be useless. "Is the other one the Martin girl?"

His answer is throwing himself face-first on the bed and whining, which isn't a very punk thing to do. Jealousy is patriarchal and tries to make property out of people, according to Lydia, so this feelings are definitely not very punk either. "Are you gonna tell me anything, or you just going to lie in bed and cry like a little boy, kiddo?"

"I'm kinda leaning towards the second," Stiles says, raising his head from the pillow just long enough to answer and then letting it down again. His dad sighs again, mumbles something that sounds a lot like "how the hell did I raise this dumbass?" and closes the door behind him when he gets out of the room.

Stiles thinks of Scott and Lydia showing off the new tongue rings they went and got together and he just feels like breaking shit.

 

He snaps at them one too many times, spends all of his lunches and breaks smoking alone behind the gym instead of joining them under the bleachers, ignores them completely during classes. After four days of Scott being even nicer than usual ans asking him to talk, please, tell him why he's mad; and Lydia telling him to stop being such an annoying brat and, if he won't talk about what's happening, just suck it up and start behaving like a human being again; they give up on him.

Okay, they don't give up on him. Stiles is exaggerating a tiny little bit. But they reduce their interactions to Scott's careful little smiles and Lydia's constant glares; and don't try to approach him again. Stiles knows it's for the best, but it doesn't actually feel any better. He doesn't like the way being their friend fills him with hopes and ideas of things that will obviously never happen, but  _not_ being their friend feels like bile on his mouth all the time.

He tries to convince himself that it will go away with time, and eventually he'll be able to approach them without feeling a little breathless and a lot hopeless. Eventually. In the meantime, he writes poetry that sounds a lot like Fall Out Boy lyrics and then lights it on fire on the backyard.

 

It's been fourteen days, seventeen hours and about twenty minutes, and Stiles still doesn't feel any better. He's listened to Natalia Kills' last album a hundred times and deleted about the same amount of unfinished texts to Lydia. He's handwritten the lyrics to Fall Out Boy's "What a Catch, Donnie" and considered slipping them under Scott's door (he even walked to Scott's house, just to turn around and go back home -three times). 

He decides to talk to them, maybe clear up that he's an idiot and that he can't really control what he's feeling and have Lydia laugh at him. He takes the decision and  _does it_. Well, he takes the decision on Monday and actually goes off to find them on a Wednesday, but that's just a minor detail. 

He slips under the bleachers when Coach Finstock can't see him, nervously fishing for a cigarette in his pockets even before he's made sure that Lydia and Scott are here. He can't see them between the columns, but he hears Lydia's laughter. 

"Do you think Stiles won't be angry at us?" She's asking. Stiles stops in place, the unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. He hears Scott's chuckle. "I don't think he can't be  _angrier_ at us," he's saying now, and Stiles steps forward slowly, trying not to make any noise. He can see the wave of Lydia's hot pink skirt and the arm of Scott's leather jacket just peeking from behind a column, but nothing else. "He's just being an idiot," Lydia says, and Stiles can  _hear_ the way she waves her hand dismissively and then purses her lips. 

"Well, but he does have a crush on you," Scott says, and Stiles doesn't know how the conversation started, but he doesn't like where it's going. He keeps walking, as silently as possible. "You say that as if he hasn't had a crush on you since the beginning of time," is Lydia's answer, and Stiles wants to bury himself under the foundation of the school and die there. 

Scott is chuckling and from this angle Stiles can see that he's rubbing the back of his neck like he always does when he's embarrassed. "Come on, Scottie. We're going to talk this out, and the three of us are going to be okay, yes? Now, can we stop going ov..." Lydia's mini-speech is interrupted, and Stiles  _really_ doesn't need to see to know what cut her off, but he steps forward anyways. Now he is, finally, able to see what's going on. 

Lydia's hands on the back of Scott's neck and the way her hair is tangled in his hands feels like a punch to the gut to Stiles. The cigarette falls from his hands, and he doesn't really care for not being heard when he turns on his heels and gets the fuck out of there. 

Whatever this feeling is, it makes him want to hit things with a bat and cry like a little boy. It's not the best feeling.

 

Scott is the first to show up. He hears the roar of his stupid dirtbike long before the taps on his window, but doesn't get out of bed. Scott knows how to unlock it from outside with a paperclip, anyways, so there's not much use to ignoring him, except enjoying his muted curses when he stabs his own finger with the clip. Only when Scott finally gets the lock to open does Stiles dignify him with the  _great effort_ of getting out of bed. 

"You know, my dad isn't home. And if he was, your stupid bike would have woken up ten minutes ago," Stiles says, hoping that the bike didn't hear him calling it stupid. Scott raises his eyebrows, and sits more comfortably on the windowsill. "Hey, hey, hey, don't sit down. Get the fuck out. You are not welcome, dude." 

"You talk like a jock when you get defensive," comes Lydia's voice from the opposite side. Stiles turns around so fast he hears a little pop inside his shoulder. Lydia's standing at his open door, with an unlit cigarette on one hand and a bottle of homemade air freshener on the other. "This will cover the smell, honey. And you definitely need a smoke," she says, with that pursing-of-lips that is always so infuriating and attractive. He accepts the Marlboro Light anyways, and lets her light it up for him. 

"Man," starts Scott, still sitting at the window, while Lydia sits next to him, "man, you can't keep avoiding us forever." Stiles looks at Scott's hands, barely illuminated by the light coming from the street, as he rolls a cigarette. Instead of answering, he leans forward and turns on the lamp on his desk. Lydia speaks next. "Stiles, honestly, I thought you above something as petty as jealousy," she says, and Stiles knows she's just playing on how stupidly proud he is. 

"I'm not... Fuck," Stiles huffs and takes a drag of the cigarette. "I'm jealous, of course I'm jealous, but that's not it. I thought you above laughing at me because of this, or," he struggles to find his words -not used to actually speaking his  _feelings_ out loud- "or at least above laughing at me behind my back, or whatever." 

He looks at his hands as he plays with the cigarette between his fingers. When Lydia leans a delicate hand on his shoulder, he flinches away. "Oh, Stiles, you are an idiot," she says, and if she was going for comforting, well, he really thinks she should try harder. 

"We were not laughing at you, dude," Scott says, and jumps off the window to come sit at his other side. Stiles focuses on his hands, and he's glad he remembered to take his meds today. He still feels fidgety and like his heart is about to jump off his chest, but that's probably just because the two people that he loves the most are sitting at his sides, about to drop a " _we're dating and we think you're a loser,_ " on him. 

"I was laughing at Scott, actually," Lydia says. Stiles watches the cigarette consume. "I mean, it's a laughing matter. The dumbass has been pinning on his best friend for like three years, and he's never noticed that the feeling is mutual," she explains, and Stiles drops the cigarette to the floor and has to scramble to grab it before it leaves a hole in the carpet. 

"What?" he asks, finally, and he could swear his eyebrows are touching his hairline. She's grinning. "Scott likes you, idiot. And I like you too.  _We_ like you." Stiles looks at her for ten seconds straight, his mouth hanging open. He's sure he's just misheard. He  _must_ have misheard. "What?" he repeats.

But, instead of answering, Lydia leans slowly towards him. Like she's waiting for him to lean back, or push her away, but he doesn't. Even if he  _wanted to,_ he's not so sure he remembers how basic motor functions work. When she kisses him, short and soft, he forgets how to breathe too.

The feeling of Scott's hand on his elbow and his worried, "are you okay with this?" snap him out of it. It takes him at least three seconds to be able to close his mouth, though. When he turns to Scott, though, Scott is frowning and he's smiling like a fucking idiot. Which is totally justified in this case, he thinks, as he leans to kiss Scott.

Scott smiles against his mouth before kissing back, and Stiles can hear Lydia giggle. She's running a hand down his bicep and leaning her chin on his shoulder, but Stiles can't really focus on that because Scott takes less than three second to go from soft kiss to grabbing his jaw and prying his mouth open. The tongue ring clinks against Stiles' teeth and " _how did he forget about it?_ "he wonders. Then it brushes against the roof of his mouth, and Lydia's breath is on his neck, and he doesn't really care. 

He finally remembers that he needs to breathe in the form of a gasp when Lydia sucks at the juncture of his jaw. Scott drags himself away from him and Stiles can't help but let out a so-not-punk whimper, but Lydia's hand pull at his hair and he can't dwell too much on it. He turns his head to her side, and she's got a tiny little smirk on her lips and he thinks that wow. Wow. 

Her kiss starts with a bite at his bottom lip and Scott's hand slipping under his shirt, and, fuck, he really does feel like setting something on fire or starting a revolution right now. 


End file.
